World Champs

Humble beginnings
The first Scrabble World Championship was held in London in 1991, hosted by Mattel. It featured 48 players from 19 countries. The total prize pool was $US19,000, with $10,000 of that going to the winner.

The tournament event was played to combined-dictionary rules (Chambers and OSPD), which may have proved problematical for the 'single-dictionary' countries. Or maybe not, given that two Americans contested the best-of-five final. The inaugural winner was Peter Morris, who ironically hasn't returned to play in this tournament since. His finals opponent, a young, fresh-faced Brian Cappelletto, came back to win the event exactly 10 years later.

Global reach
Since then the event has been held two more times in London, and once each in New York, Washington DC, Melbourne, Las Vegas, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai and Johor Bahru (Malaysia). For the first six events, Hasbro (the brand owner in North America) and Mattel (brand owner in the rest of the world) alternated sponsorship, before Hasbro withdrew to focus more on TWL-only events.

The latest WSC — Johor Bahru in 2009 — had 108 players from 41 countries, including a great many for whom English is not a first language. The prize pool was up to with $30,500, with $US15,000 for the winner.

On the podium
There have been plenty of repeat finalists, showing that the genuine superstars of Scrabble always rise to the challenge on the big stage. Joel Wapnick (Can) and Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (Thai) have played in three finals each; Brian Cappelletto (US), Mark Nyman (UK), Joel Sherman (US and Nigel Richards (NZ) have played in two; and Morris, David Boys (Can), Panupol Sujjayakorn (Thai) and Adam Logan (Can) have each nailed the title on their only finals appearance. But no one has yet won it twice. Could 2011 be the year?

Learn more about Scrabble's premier international event.